CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media

Class 2: Mass and New Media Analysis

Introduction• In pairs:• What did you do this summer?• What do you expect to gain out of this

course?• What do you want to be doing in five

years?• Name one issue of contention or

controversy involving media (mass or new…)

Media Analysis• Analysis of media form, genre• Technological analysis and

determinism• Critical political economy• Cultural Studies

Brainstorming Genre• What defines a genre? • How can we break down definitions

to increase analytical precision? • What benefits exist in doing so? To

whom? And when do we hit a point of ridiculousness in doing so?

• What genres exist?

Principles to consider..• All media forms can be classified into genres

(some deliberately or inadvertently bridge or mix forms)

• All media forms involve technology (in the broadest sense of the word)

• All media have economic, political and cultural consequence

• Holistic understanding of media systems leads to a more grounded, less biased understanding

Mass/Public Media & Society

• C. Wright Mills backgrounder• Institutionalization of mass

society and its shaping of mass media (sociotechnical system)

Public v. Mass• Localized culture• Horizontal power

structure• Relatively equal

ratio of leaders/followers

• “Jack of all trades”

• Global culture, with little individuation

• Centralized power structures

• Few leaders, many followers

• Specialization and division of labour

Implications for Media Form

• Mass media for mass audiences in mass societies

• Competition for amount of eyeballs, media as big business

• Mass media as central bonding experience • Mass media as centralized cultural control

structure

Demassification• Rise of the postmodern /

postindustrial / information age• Individuals and localized communities

reemerge and gain in importance• Media as tools of creation and

expression, not simply passive channels

• Examples?

Society and Media as STS

• Sociotechnical systems - not technologically determined or socially shaped, but a mix of the two forces operating concomitantly

• In this case, does mass culture drive the formation of mass media? Or, is it the other way around?

Manovich• Language of New Media - distilling the core

essence of new media forms into eight propositions (a good example of media genre analysis for the Wiki?)

• More of a technological determinism approach, although does look at social and economic factors

• N.B. “New Media” is not a chronological distinction (although newer examples are more likely to be “new”)

New Media vs. Cyberculture

• Proposes a distinction - new media studies as studies of new cultural forms and structures vs. the social use (e.g., gaming culture, digital divide issues)

• Is this a clear distinction?

New Media as Distribution

• Looks at new media explicitly as channel - mediated through digital transmission, in whatever form

• Is this useful? Three limits noted - a) media forms change b) are changing towards network distribution and c) is there any common ground b/w computer mediated forms, anyway?

New Media as Software Controlled

• Use of data structures, modularity, automation to create the cultural form

• Digital photography/video as example; due to common technical standards for coding and manipulation, media objects can be manipulated (sometimes automatically) with ease

• Other examples - e.g., embedded Google content

Cultural conventions• Uneven development - just because

you can represent and manipulate something in digital form doesn’t mean it will work will in practice (e.g., film)

• “morph” or “composite” - earlier conceptual models survive transition to new media (e.g., desktop metaphor vs. alternatives)

Aesthetics of New Media• New media technologies create

their own established aesthetics• Example: DV movies and cheaper

amateur production (http://48hourfilm.com/)

• Builds on previous models, however - e.g., Quicktime vs. Kinetoscope

New Media as Efficient• Computing technology executes

various tasks considerably faster - e.g., 3D animation, composite photography

• Efficiency opens up new possibilities and phenomena (e.g., DIY photo/video editing)

New Media as Metamedia

• New media repurposes old media, combines existing media sources (e.g., photo montage, web mashing, music sampling)

• Not new, just qualitatively different (and more efficient) than previous uses (e.g., 1920s avant-garde)

New Media as Nexus of Art and Computing

• Computing becomes a more right-brain, creative process - a tool to represent and create new realities vs. simply crunch numbers (although there’s lots of that still required…)

McLuhan - Laws of Media

• Universal dynamic of media change• Represented as tetrad - four

intersecting concomitant influences• Grouped into two forces - ground

(historical/cultural convention) and figure (emergent forces/media)

Four Forces• Enhancement (positive change,

amplification)• Retrieval (recovery of past forces)• Reversal (new or resurgent

challenges jeopardizing new media)• Obsolescence (erosion of older

values/forces)

Next Week…• Genre and its definitional

elements• McCloud as example - and

potential tools for analysis relevant to the first assignment